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I have a couple of jars of karo water that have been growing for a while. What would contamination look like as opposed to mycelium. I know the difference in a pf jar or a grain jar, but this is my first karo attempt.

myctopia.net answered a lot of my questions about this subject. The shroomery doesn't have as many pictures and discussions about liquid tek contaminants.

Contaminants are pretty easy to spot. Bacterial contaminants will turn the water cloudy with minimal shaking. Yeast contamination causes the water to ferment and bubble. Other contaminants, usually have color and stain the top of the water.

Mycelia is white to yellow/white. If you don't stirr your jar for a couple of days, a membrane of mycelia should start forming on the bottom of the jar. When stirred, this membrane should tear and float in the water like wet tissue paper. While small, the mycelia does look like cotton, and sometimes you see some strings of myc but it looks much more like wet white tissue paper to the naked eye. In its early stages though, it looks like little cotton balls.

Over the next couple of days, The white cloud in your jar should turn into larger clumps of mycelia.

If you keep stirring the jar, mycelia will never form on the bottom, even though it is present in the water.

The only contaminant that looks like mycelia (That I have found online) is cobweb. It is characterized by black dots when in Karo water. Cobweb, from what I hear, is more likely to contaminate casings than Karo water.

Basically, if your jar is contaminated, you'd probably know it without even opening the thing to smell it. If you aren't sure the water is contaminated, smell around the open jar when you make a syringe.

allright same subject, a friends got a couple of these jars and when you stir them, like theres some white shit that settles at the bottom, im like 100% its not myc, it like twirls off the bottom, my guess is its the karo in the water settling, cuz its not fluffy or strands. any one else got this in there jars? and if so it ok to use cuz he gots some with this shit, and some with out.

yeah but it twirls more like smoke, there crazy bits of myc, it doesnt really look like myc and it seems to kinda disapte, hmm i might jsut be paranoid ill have my friend just throw a few cc'c of some h202 to ease his mind

Let the stuff settle for a few days and it will start to clump together better. Until then, it stays pretty small. The Shroomery descriptions are a bit misleading.

At this point, H2O2 should be added when you make a syringe. This way you will kill any contams you put in the jar. Any contams already growing in the jar will not be effected by the h2o2. No sence in doing it until you have a reason to open the jar.